Day 14 Return of the Living Dead & Return of the Living Dead 2!!

Let’s talk about classic American cinema. Shall we?

It’s a time in Hollywood where a man can dream. Dream of making a punk comedy semi possibly sequel to a successful film without worry over rights issues. It is the time, of the 80’s my friend. A time where the writer of ALIEN Dan O’Banon dreamed of making a zombie comedy that ties itself to the George Romero classic Night of the Living Dead.

Calling itself, Return of the Living Dead.

Is it recognized as an official sequel or canon? NO! It just exist, deal with it!

It is glorious and amazing. It makes no apologies, nor should it. Think too hard about it and you lose the point.

What is the point? I Don’t know! You’re over thinking it already!

So the story is thus. A young man gets himself a job working for a supply warehouse and while getting his grand tour of the many oddities they store, is introduced to a horrible truth. That the events in Night of the Living Dead actually happened, That a toxin was responsible for the deads re-animation. A chemical called Trioxin 245 in fact. Further more? They actually have in their storage warehouse there one of those very bodies, stored in a ‘made by the U.S. Government’ containers. Which being American made means quality!

Which the moment they touch the container, it immediately begins spewing out toxic Trioxin 245 gas.

Now, that’s the start of story A.

Story B however gives us some fun to think about.

Story B revolves around a car full of punks, and the girlfriend of the young man (Freddy) working for the warehouse. They’re trying to party and entertain themselves while waiting for Freddy to get off work. Which leads them to a cemetery party, naturally.

Which also introduces us to the question of, hey. Is there any nudity in this film?

Why yes. Yes there is. Is the answer. Punk girl cutie named Trash. Informs us that graveyards get her hot. Which prompts her to begin stripping and, dance atop a large concrete grave. Fully nude. Your welcome.

Trash also chooses to inform us of her hottest fantasy. No it’s not being tagged team by two construction workers in a porta potty at a crowded music festival on a 98 degree day.

Her fantasy is a bunch of old men taring her apart piece by piece. Maybe it’ll happen! Who knows!!

The punks are great fun in this, especially their leader Suicide. The man is trying to give a moving speech in the graveyard about how no one takes him seriously. That dressing as a punk is a way of life! All while Trash is dry humping against him, it isn’t until she honks his junk that he stops her and informs her “Have some fucking respect for the dead!”

These movies have some of the greatest one liners and off hand jokes.

So back at the Warehouse. The chemical is released and re-animates half of a dead dog, and a full on human corpse donated for science. Which Freddy and his boss struggle with to take care of. Semi successfully. But now they have a problem. How do they get rid of this zombie! Without causing a panic?!

Why by contacting their boss of course. Who happens to be good friends with the local mortician. After some polite discussion he agrees to allowing the three men to use his crematorium to burn the body and fully dispose of it, ending this nightmare before it turns into another Night of the Living dead scenario!

Which is does anyway! Because the fumes of the body travel out the chimney and thanks to some sudden rain, because god was bored. It begins literally raining zombie juice over the graveyard. Which is where this film kicks in fully.

In fact, the exact moment this movie takes off is when zombies begin rising up from the ground and we see a puppet corpse open its eyes, gasp out and, the soundtrack picks up and “DO YOU WANNA PARTAAAAY” commence rocking out!

Everyone begins running like mad. Trash sees her fantasy become fulfilled as the others make off for the nearby Warehouse. Where we are introduced to the best zombie in the history of Zombies. The Tar man. A melting zombie with huge eyes and black tar like substance all over him.

Oh. Did I forget to mention? These zombie talk?! They absolutely do. They also aren’t that slow either!

The humor in this, again can’t be stressed enough. We have zombies killing people, stating their request for brains. A great scene of cops being killed and a zombie getting on the CB radio saying “Send…more…cops”

The Tar man eats Suicides brains, and everyone flips out. Meanwhile Freddy and his boss aren’t doing so well. In fact, they’ve started to become ill. Comically ill. Their skin begins turning gray. Their tongues purple. They have no heartbeat, and seem to be coming down with a case of the deads! Which again is highly hilariously played off by these two guys.

We also get a super chilling scene where the group ends up capturing a half rotting torso of a female corpse. They strap her to the table and, well. Ask her what it’s like being dead, and why they’re eating us. Which apparently death is….pain. And eating relieves the pain.

Death is not fun. Not in this movie. But the dead are fun, and so are the living.

We have a reasonable mortuary worker in a classy smoking jacket, with a classy car, having fine adult conversations with his good friend who runs the warehouse about dealing with the dead situation. We have an overly super caring ride or die girlfriend trying to stick by her slowly turning into a zombie boyfriend, AND punks doing their best to survive!!

But no one does. Literally NO ONE SURVIVES!!

Not because they failed, or zombies over run them. But because of our government. They contact the number on the side of the container that held The Tar man and let the military know one of the containers busted! They inform everyone help is on the way, do not worry!

We see this help arrive. The army is in force outside the town limits. Shooting at the zombies. Another phone call is made and…..a nuke is being launched onto the town!!

Everyone is at their most dire of situations, facing defeat, fighting for freedom and BOOM! Everyone is taken out!

We hear a radio transmission saying that the problem has been taken care of….until it begins raining again and they replay the puppet zombie breaking through the ground and “DO YOU WANNA PARTAAAAY!”

So, how do you top off a crazy silly zombie comedy semi sequel?

You recast most the cast and put them in different jobs, then introduce the zombie issue in suburbia!!

This time around we have the army disposing of more containers with bodies, this time from the remains of the first films incident. Unfortunately one of these barrels gets knocked off the truck and ends up parked in a sewer tunnel.

Which leads us to the introduction of one protagonist, a young boy trying to deal with flannel wearing bullies. While escaping these bullies he finds himself face to face with the stuck body container. Which the bullies too soon discover. He wisely tells the bullies that, as cool as this is? Perhaps they should leave it be. But the bullies say nuts to that and begin tapping away on the keypad lock for the container. Which, tada! Frees the famous Trioxin 245 gas. Both bullies end up inhaling this while the boy makes his way out of the sewer and is soon followed. Ending up chased to a cemetery where he tells the bullies they need to contact the army, call the police, handle this situation! Which the bullies hear his argument, decide it’s a fair point and throw him into a mausoleum.

And this is where we are introduced to two returning faces. Now playing two different roles, but still somewhat the same. Freddy and his boss from the first film return as….grave robbers. Freddy is now the semi unwilling worker of his grave robbing boss. Who informs him one of the perks of this job is he can take some of the dead jewelry and gift it to his girlfriend. Thankfully this time Freddy and his boss do not inhale the gas and become zombies. Instead they run into the young boy who escapes just as it begins to rain and Trioxin seeps into the ground once more.

Corpses begin re-animating and all hell gets ready to bust loose and party. The graverobbers end up getting told off by a corpse they tried robbing from and fleeing the mausoleum to Freddy’s girlfriend and a van.

The young boy returns to his neighborhood and decides to check on the main bully because. Well even if a bully picked on you, you can still somewhat be friends. He comes to find the boy very sick and still capable of threatening him with violence if he tells anyone about what they found! Because sure why not keep that secret. Sure nothing could go wrong.

So zombies take to the town and hilarity ensues. Like a zombie wrestling with a guy and stopping when an exercise tape begins to play and they both stare transfixed at the lady in the video.

Remember how thankful I was that Freddy and his boss escaped being infected this movie? Well they actually didn’t. They ended up inhaling Trioxin and once again comically begin turning into zombies. But this time! This time he gets to eat his girlfriends brains, because she loves him too much to kill him. The mortuary owner from the first one returns as a well to do man with a fancy set of wheels that the survivors end up using with his approval of course, to escape to a hospital. Which doesn’t work well so they take off in an ambulance. Which also doesn’t work out as they run into the national guard who open fire on them.

Not to be dissuaded the group try to think of an escape. Which leads to the greatest plan for brain hungry zombies. They drive the ambulance to a meatpacking plant, load it up with…brains, and beef. Which they begin distributing to zombies getting them to follow them all to the local power plant.

Here we get our final showdown. The young boy faces his tormenter and pulls a 300 shoving him off onto a transformer and frying him. All the other zombies end up getting fried as well. So the plan was a success!

Until Return of the Living Dead 3, 4….5. They needed to stop at some point.

Honestly it’s not that hard for these movies to stack up against each other. To be fair they’re basically the same story told again, but with a bigger budget. But somehow it still tops the original. But again in its own glorious way.

You don’t have the same punk custom soundtrack the first had. But it still holds up. Seeing familiar characters in the exact same situation as before, made to turn into zombies all over again is somehow hilarious. The zombies have some great moments, like a dispatch operator trying to talk to them and being asked who the current president is, only to discover the dispatcher is a zombie naming a long dead president.

It’s everything a perfect sequel should be. Its funny, bloody, It manages to tell a 80% similar story and add in a good enough deal new stuff to make it better and take your mind off of the ‘This is what happened before.’ It just adds to its charm. So as always. Do check it out. If you already have, just watch them again.

These films deserve all the love and need a bigger audience. You can have your Conjuring, and Insidious. But you gotta make room for Return of the Living Dead. You gotta!